Is Scott Brown offended by Native American jokes? Or does he think they’re funny?

Poor Scott Brown. The guy just can’t get his story straight. Is making tasteless cracks about Native Americans funny, or is it something that he thinks is offensive? Yesterday, in light of the embarrassing revelation that his staff was caught on video at a rally doing “tomahawk chops” and “war whoops” (by the way, the video that we posted yesterday has recorded nearly 100,000 views so far), Brown piously intoned that the conduct was “certainly something that I don’t condone” and that he’d instruct his staff “to never do it again.” But a couple of months ago, when on the Howie Carr show Dennis Miller made a crack about sending a donation to Elizabeth Warren “in beads, just to piss her off,” well, Scotto thought that was pretty good. Listen:

Here’s a transcript, in case you can’t hear the audio (it starts at about 14:40 of the full segment):

HOWIE CARR: Dennis, I want you to meet somebody, if you don’t already know him – Scott Brown is on the line here, our U.S. Senator, who’s in a tight fight against a fake Indian named Elizabeth Warren.

DENNIS MILLER: Heh heh heh heh.

CARR: Scott.

SCOTT BROWN: Dennis, how are you?

MILLER: Scottie, I just sent her a donation today in beads, just to piss her off.

BROWN: Ha ha ha ha ha.

CARR: Ha ha ha.

MILLER: Heh heh heh.

BROWN: Well, you’re a good man, and a funny man, you bring a lot of laughs to people, and it’s been nice listening to the interview.

Of course, Miller is a professional, so I can see how Scotto thinks it’s totes hilarious when Miller does it, but less so when Brown’s staffers, who after all are only amateur comedians, do basically the same thing.

Anyway, we’ve also got a video clip of Scott Brown doing nothing as someone in his audience “war whoops” as he mentions Elizabeth Warren’s heritage. This video was shot by the Chatham Republicans and helpfully posted on their website on August 1 of this year, so presumably the event took place shortly before that. Here’s a mashup of Brown’s statement yesterday, along with the relevant portion of the Chatham event (which comes at about 9:30 of the full video).

He can’t possibly have missed the whooping. Would it have been so hard to pause, say that it was inappropriate, and then continue? But no.

It’s hard to escape the conclusion that Scott Brown actually cares about this stuff only when he has to. Otherwise, it’s either funny or not worth commenting on.

So currently in Massachusetts we have a constituency of Native Americans, the Mashpee Wompanoags, who are working on a multi-million dollar project to bring a casino to southeastern Massachusetts. if you believe the numbers, this casino is going to be an economic engine that generates $500 million annually and is important to a great deal of people, both Wompanoag and non-Native Americans.

So, when people connected to this deal need help from our state’s representatives Washington and call Senator Brown’s office, are they going to be greeted with war whoops and fake Native American dialect?